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occurs chronologically after [REG] We Accept Them (Thraen + Eurydike)


Accessing the apartment directly meant passing by the cheerful, cat-decorated storefront of the converted brownstone building, passing through a gated alley and along to the back were an extensive, retracting ladder fire escape had been replaced with a more reasonable, restored art deco stairs and landings fire escape that climbed the building in pale patina elevations. Quenton started up, offering, "The living space is at the top. "

They were both senshi who went on regular patrols, so he didn't worry about the other man getting puffed by a handful of flights. A key opened the door in the stone wall facing them, but immediately beyond it was rooftop garden of planters, walk paths, pots, raised grass beds (slightly cat chewed and rolled upon), a teak tea house structure, and a door into a green wall beyond that likely, and from how Quenton led across the walk paths did, lead into the small apartment space itself. "There's a way up from the Catfe that is the 'front door', this is the 'back.' "

It was an explanation offered to lampshade the unorthodox entry to a sitting/study/ area in front of the windows and green wall with built in bookshelves filled with volumes, notebooks, scrolls of art, music, and small brick-a-bracks. Then there was a short walk past the bedroom alcove and into the kitchen and dinette area where there was a beat up antique table whose top was covered in shining pennies that were glossed over in a depth of clear lacquer, with two mismatched kitchen chairs. "Have a seat. Welcome. How do you take your coffee?"

"I own the Catfe and work shifts at it." There was an awkward moment internally in leaving the conversation there- Eurydike had consistently been offended, and balked at, offers of help and invitations. Inviting to come to the Catfe and to bring his fiance seemed too much a risk of the same offense, all the more if it was free as one of the S-VIP levels that were kept on the books as officially getting a free drink, free sweet, and one free guest pass every week. But what is the factor that causes the offense? I don't know enough about him personally to guess. unless...

While the other got settled, a blog article by John Scalzi filtered through Quenton's thoughts.
Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

In case there was ever a problem downstairs, there was a smaller, but still professional grade espresso pull upstairs in the apartment. But Quenton skipped it in favor of the Chemex and filter with a Blackburn Estate Tanzania ground. The sugar was turbinado in a dish with a tiny, slightly tarnished antique spoon that he set on the table for Hitch to add as much as he liked. The mug was more austere than the cute cat ones in the cafe- plain, square, black. "Thank you. It was a lot of...elbow grease. I did the renovation myself. I'd never hung dry wall, done wiring, or much woodworking for architecture before. That's why all the lines are very...plain and simple. But I was able to build in hidden storage and hiding space. Like something from the Underground Railroad. "

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.
Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.

He thinks he's stupid. His grammar and diction are not from middle class. He is always so angry. Is it that he grew up poor? Is still poor? Is that the reason? It's possible. If that is the reason, then the only safe conversation is to try to avoid anything that really approaches him or his life. If he talks about it or offers it, then fine, but can't make a bridge from this side, practically. Can't show curiosity. Or will that be offensive, too, by virtue of making him think I don't care? I don't even know. Lose-lose, no use wasting time about it.

"Still, everything is an improvement." Quenton pulled two Gravenstein apples from a basket on the counter as well as a knife from the block, and a plate to bring to the table. When he sat in the chair opposite Hitch, Quenton started idly slicing the thing down into sections to share on the plate between them. "Would you prefer to do it organically, asking questions about what you want to know, for me to go through the primer section by section, or some other method? I don't know what is most comfortable for you. Some people get annoyed at hearing information they already know, others don't, whether there's new peppering in there or not. "

"It's a lot of hours, worse in getting it set up. Dealing with lawyers, regulations regarding food service, profits and animal services, adoptions, liabilities. Now that it is running- keeping up with algorithms for supply, having new themed product, marketing, maintaining the space to be absolutely clean, friendly and accurate. I don't sleep much, since I also am working on graduate school. I should hire a third person to take my shifts, so that I could sleep. It is worth it for the cats. I like cats. They need homes. " A third barista would free up at least 20 hours more if they were part time. His time could be more spent in the administrations or as a floater doing stock, cleaning the cat room while the front was still manned, grading papers, working on his thesis, or even arranging and hosting more events with the VIP room or in the evenings and weekends with BYOB.

"It is a place the Mauvians feel welcome, that can be a haven for other senshi and knights at need. No questions will crop up if I'm ordering bulk of food, fabric, or other necessities. It's popular. Even civilians are all stressed out, and cats are relaxing. So it makes enough that it is paying it's own mortgage and running costs as well as some extra to set aside for the use of the Black Watch. "

"I don't mind you giving my name. It's in the Primer many times, but word of mouth is the best advertising, if it can be called that. We could all be in this for a lot longer, and I want others to have the best start they can get. There's no reason to keep repeating the same tragedies. You can message me, too, and set up meetings immediately if they want to meet me. Or you can bring them here, and we can all have drinks and talk much the same. " He finished slicing both apples and putting the whorls of slices onto the plate on the table between them. Then took one and considered Hitch's given answer. "Let's start there then. Tell me what you know."

Quenton considered a moment without movement or speech, then stood and retrieved a moleskin from one of the nearby builtin shelves along with a quilpen. Opening, the words "Black Watch" and "Barista" were jotted down to keep until later.

"Finding out about something via an encounter is a start- knowing it is possible. As a group, Knights and Senshi, we still have a lot of the details of how, why and what specifically to find out through further encounters or what we can find on homeworlds. "

"Alright....so you know you're a senshi, which is someone who's starseed is connected to the heart of an astral body out there in space, be it star, asteroid, constellation, and so forth. Guardian Cats are who give us the pens which allow us to transform, as well as tell us our world name and our magic phrase. And our phones. I don't know why they do this, or feel compelled to do so. They're reincarnated alien souls, like ours are, but from the world Mau. Hence 'Mauvian', a demonym, like saying someone from New York is a New Yorker. "

"Senshi are stronger, faster, more agile, and as far as I can tell from hospital stays, can heal faster than regular people. These powers increase as we increase in 'power'- the titles of Senshi, Super Senshi, and Eternal Senshi. I Could make maybe two stories when I started. Now I can get from the ground to the roof of taller buildings without having to hop off of a fireescape first. Average long distance running speed for people is about 6.7 miles per hour, coming in at a 9-minute mile. The seven minute mile is the golden for such runners. As a basic senshi, running on patrols, I was doing maybe a five minute mile, which is...thirteen? Or fourteen miles per hour? As an Eternal, I'm faster still. We feel cold and heat, but the weather effects us directly much less in uniform- many times we should have had frostbite where we don't for how we patrol in winter. It is a little like video games and movies, with evolutions. I haven't so far heard of or seen a specific set of circumstances that must be met before a Guardian tells you you're ready for the next stage. They just do, and either modify your pen or they press their star to your chest and directly modify your starseed somehow. When I get a chance, I'll hopefully sit a few of them down to ask about this."

"Some Mauvians stick to one senshi or team. Some don't. It doesn't seem a reflection of any worth, and is just a personal preference. So if you don't have a Mauvian hanging around you personally, don't worry about it other than making sure to check up with one on occassion to see if you're ready for an evolution or in case they might be able to help with tech improvements, or answer a question. Some of them have been around a long time, and from talking to lots of senshi and knights have a wide bank of experiences to try to sift information from. "

"There are Mauvians who have been corrupted to the Negaverse just like Senshi have been, and I suppose they help the corrupted senshi. I've only met one. There is also one Guardian Cat who comes from a parallel Dimension to our own that is reached through a special mirror on the Moon in the Palace. It is different from the Dark Mirror Court of Senshi. She has a crescent instead of a star, and is named Zirconia. " Quenton carefully scrawled down symbols for each of the groups. Hopefully using similar symbols for analogs would reinforce the idea that when one or another type was corrupted or purified, it became that title.

"There are parallel dimensions, and planes of existence. Our contact, as a whole, has been limited, spotty, and the knowledge not wide spread. As I said, there is only one Mauvian I knew of from the Parallel Dimension here. I don't know if she still lives. There is also a plane of Nightmares, connected somehow to people's dreams, I posit, where there is a Priestess who ruled with very strong magic. There may be other places. Science has already long talked of such things in quantum physics, but that' separate in a way from the reality and all the magic that we live with that...makes much of it hard to quantify. You may never encounter such things, but it is better if you know they exist, so that you aren't blindsided. "

"My experience with the Dark Mirror Court, and their wraiths is limited. They're full of Chaos, and sometime work with the Negaverse. Sometimes against it. But the chaos is there. The Wraiths steal energy for them. They're impossible to hit at first, but there's some threshold where they become tangible. They're followers of a Queen Ares, a Prince Remarque, and a Princess Leto. Maybe some of them are willing to talk, I don't know. That they steal from people as much as the Negaverse, and have allied with them, is already enough for me to be wary of them. Zirconia was trying to study their starseeds for a while, as they were an abomination, I think, to her and her Princess's people. I never heard back if there were definite answers. If the mirror sheen to their starseeds was all the way through, if it was parasitic, if there was a way to heal them... There's probably more questions brought up by all that then answers. It gets into specific lore, guessing games, and more and more questions, beyond what just a Primer needs. We can go over it, though, another time if you're still interested. "

"Part of learning anything is finding out that the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. It isn't a point of shame. The point of this is to get you informed on what we can manage, and then you can see where the boundaries we're all working with are and decide if you want to spearhead trying to expand a section of the knowledge we all have. " The finger drumming was strange. Was Hitch bored? It didn't seem so. Frustrated? Likely so. Overwhelmed? Also a likely possibility. It was a strange tick, which tied slow and sure to the scent of the man near as a table's distance. Familiar in the salted hair, on the worn clothes, and in the very nervousness. It was the scent of tobacco. Alois quit, patches and suckers when he came to live with me. He had a lot of that nervousness.

Quenton offered the writing tool over to the man to fidget with, since there was long since no random hard candy around. "That is a rabbit. I don't know directly if the moon rabbits and a power that appeared called Queen Finsternis were connected, but they were concurrent in time. I've not had a chance to talk to Athene more about it, and the entry in the Primer was his, I believe. They appeared at the city's moon viewing party, then vanished as they touched people. "

"And yes, that is the symbol of Chronos. Chronos is a Princess Senshi, and she wields the Greater Crystal called the Opal Crystal. She 'rules' the Surrounding, which is a rainbow road the rings our solar system. There are Wonders on it which are where Chronos Knights take their powers and names from, and there are specific outposts along the road which are the signs of the Zodiac, and they are the home of the Zodiac Senshi. They feel a little different from regular white moon senshi, and call themselves the Zodiac Guard. They serve Chronos, I guess. She's quiet. She seemed kind and shy when I talked to her. Remote. "

"It brings the next point up- Royal senshi are above Eternal senshi in power. The royals we know of are Iris, Castor, Polaris, Chronos and Cosmos for the White Moon. Ares, Remarque, and Leto for the Dark Mirror. I've not heard of any serving the Negaverse. The Parallel world had a 'Helen.' The white moon Royals, I believe, all wield a Crystal of some sort. But there is a difference in the power levels of the crystals, some being called 'Greater'. The greater crystals I've heard of were the Silver Crystal of our Moon, and the Golden Crystal I surmise to be of Earth, and the Opal Crystal wielded by Chronos. 'Helen' had the Marcasite Crystal, which was lost, I think, when she died. Zirconia was piecing together the Parallel Earth's Pyrite Crystal, which had exploded. "

"Iris has a 'regular' royal crystal, though I never got out of her what he differences were. Cosmos' I do not know. Nor Castor, Polaris, or whether or not other Royal Senshi bear crystals of some sort in service to Chaos. "
"Our Royals are the ones who can perform some purification. A target supposedly must be willing with all their heart. When Alois and I were working for his purification, we didn't have time to determine if the number of royals trying at once, or distance from Earth and the Negaverse's influence, could alter the outcome as a matter of outside variables. He was also partially youmafied. "